As an example of article transport facilities, a facility is used that includes an article transport device that transports an article to a transport target location and a control device that controls the operation of the article transport device, wherein the article transport device includes a traveling portion that travels along a traveling path, a supporting portion that is supported by the traveling portion and suspends and supports the article, an elevation driving portion that raises and lowers the supporting portion relative to the traveling portion in a state in which the traveling portion is stopped, and a storage portion that stores position information for stopping the traveling portion.
A conventional example of such an article transport facility and a maintenance operation method thereof is described in JP 2005-170544A. In this article transport facility, transporting target position information representing a transporting target position at which the traveling portion is stopped when the article transport device transfers an article to a transport target location is stored in the storage portion. Then, when a transport instruction is issued, the control device that controls the article transport device stops the traveling portion at the transporting target position based on the transporting target position information, and transfers the article to the transport target location.
With the above-described article transport facility, a correction sheet provided with a detection target object is installed in the transport target location, and the position of the detected portion provided in the transport target location is detected by a position detection device supported by the supporting portion in a state in which the traveling portion is stopped at the transporting target position based on the transporting target position information. Then, the control device is configured to update the transporting target position information stored in the storage portion, based on the detection information from the position detection device.
Such an operation of updating the transporting target position information is carried out during a maintenance operation performed periodically, and is performed along with other operations (e.g., manual operations such as adjusting the orientation of the position detection device and replacing traveling wheels provided in the traveling portion) performed by the operator during a maintenance operation.
However, there have been cases where the transporting target position represented by the transporting target position information may be shifted from the ideal transporting target position due to wearing of the traveling wheels even before a maintenance operation is performed. Then, with aging of the article transport device, the shift between the transporting target position represented by the transporting target position information and the ideal transporting target position gradually increases, resulting in cases where the article transport device is unable to properly transfer the article to the transport target location.
For this reason, it is preferable to update the transporting target position information even before a maintenance operation is performed. However, the conventional article transport facility described above requires installation of the correction sheet in the relevant transport target location when updating the transporting target position information. Accordingly, during the operation of updating the transporting target position information, it is not possible to transport an article to the relevant transport target location, leading to a reduction in the article transport efficiency in the article transport facility. Furthermore, if the interval between maintenance operations is shortened, the maintenance operations will be performed with increased frequency, resulting in a greater burden on the operator.